1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medical system control apparatus for controlling multiple medical devices or the like, and a method for dealing with trouble with the medical system control apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, endoscope devices for example have come to be widely used in the medical and industrial fields.
Particularly, in the medical field, it has become widespread practice for endoscope operations or endoscope examinations to be made with system configurations having connected thereto endoscope peripheral equipment (medical devices) other than the endoscope devices themselves, such as high-frequency cauterization devices (electrically-driven scalpels), and examples of prior art thereof include, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,678,568, and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 7-303654.
With the system control apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 7-303654, the multiple pieces of medical equipment connected to the system controller are controlled in a centralized manner, and in the event that an error (or trouble) occurs with medical equipment connected thereto, the system controller detects errors thereof via a communication line, and displays the contents of the error, thereby facilitating resolving of the error.
However, with the conventional art, in the event that there is trouble due to malfunctioning of the equipment or the like, this could be detected by monitoring the state of operation of the equipment, but in the event that there is trouble relating to set-up for using the equipment, due to erroneous settings made for the equipment, erroneous connection between devices, etc., stemming from insufficient knowledge of how to operate the equipment or the like, the equipment itself operates correctly, so monitoring the state of operation of the equipment can neither detect trouble nor indicate how to deal with the trouble.
Also, the conventional art has shortcomings, such as not being able to specifically indicate how to recover from errors or trouble.